Remembering the Fed's Last Big Bailout (nytimes.com)"By 1984, Continental was the nation's eight-largest bank, with the added mystique of being based in Chicago, rather than the locus of financial power that is New York."

If It's Too Big To Fail, Is It Too Big To Exist? (nytimes.com)"Paul Volcker, the former Federal Reserve chairman and current White House adviser, for instance, has suggested that the government limit how much money big institutions can wager trading."